Wren: “In troth, I think thou wouldst not.”
I lifted my own notebook again. My text was slashed through and underlined in four different colors, so chaotically annotated that it was difficult to find the original words. I muttered to myself for a while, the others’ voices drifting gently on the whisper and crack of the fire. Fifteen minutes ticked by, then twenty. I was beginning to grow restless when the door opened downstairs.
I sat up straighter. “Finally.” Footsteps came quickly up the stairs and I said, “It’s about time, I’ve been waiting on you all night,” before I realized that it wasn’t Alexander.
“Colin,” Wren said, breaking out of her scene.
He nodded, hands moving uneasily in his coat pockets. “Sorry to barge in.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Alexander.” His cheeks were pink, but I doubted it had much to do with the cold.
Filippa exchanged a fast glance with Meredith, who said, “We thought he was with you.”
Colin nodded, eyes darting around the room, strategically avoiding all of our faces. “Yeah, he said he’d meet me for a drink at five, but I haven’t seen him or heard anything.” He shrugged. “Starting to worry, you know?”
“Yeah.” Filippa was already climbing out of her chair. “Does someone want to check his room? I’ll look in the kitchen, see if he left a note.”
“I’ll go.” Colin nearly ran out of the library, clearly desperate to get to the hall, where we wouldn’t all be staring at him.
Meredith: “What do you suppose that’s about?”
Me: “Don’t know. Did he say anything to any of you?”
Wren: “No, but he’s been a bit odd lately.”
James: “Haven’t we all.”
Wren frowned at me. I had nothing to add, so I shrugged. She opened her mouth—but to say what, I never found out, because Colin came thundering in again, all the rosy color gone from his face. “He’s in his room—something’s wrong, something’s really wrong!” His voice cracked on the last word, and we were all on our feet at once. Filippa’s voice chased us down the hall from the kitchen, high and nervous, calling, “Guys? What’s going on?”
The door cracked hard against the wall as Colin flung it open. Books and clothes and crumpled papers were strewn around the room like the refuse of a bomb blast. Alexander lay stretched on the floor, his limbs bent at awkward angles, head thrown back as if his neck had been broken.
“Oh my God,” I said. “What do we do?”
James shoved past me. “Get of the way. Colin, prop him up, can you?”
Wren pointed across the room. “What is all that?”
Under the bed, the floor was littered with pill bottles and film canisters, pushed almost out of sight behind a low-hanging corner of his comforter. Prescription labels had been torn off some, leaving streaks of fuzzy white paper behind.
James knelt beside Alexander, squeezing his wrist in search of a pulse. Colin lifted his head off the floor—and some small sound escaped between his lips.
“He’s alive,” I said, “he must be, he just—”
James’s voice was thin and strained. “Shut up a minute, I can’t—”
Filippa arrived behind us in the doorway. “What’s happening?”
Alexander murmured something, and Colin bent his head low over his face.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He must’ve taken too much of something.”
“Oh, God. What? What was he on, does anyone know?”
“His pulse is really erratic,” James said, talking fast and low. “He’s got to go to the hospital. Someone get downstairs and call for an ambulance. And someone gather up all of that shit.” He pointed at the pill bottles under the bed.
Colin blanched, cradling Alexander’s sweaty head in his lap. “You can’t send that stuff to the hospital—do you want him to get expelled?”
“Would you rather he died?” James said, fiercely.
Before Colin could answer, Alexander’s whole body seized up, teeth clenched, muscles twitching.
“Do what he says,” Meredith ordered. “Somebody get to the phone, now.” She crouched down beside James and started sweeping bottles out from under the bed. Alexander moaned, one hand groping across the floor. Colin grabbed it and squeezed hard, rocking slightly forward. Wren had backed into a corner and crouched there, hugging herself, looking sick. My stomach tried to crawl out of my mouth.
Filippa grabbed my arm. “Oliver, can you—”
“Yeah, I’ll go, you look after Wren.”
I left the room and flew down the stairs, my feet numb and clumsy underneath me. I grabbed the phone out of its cradle and dialed 911.
A voice answered. Female. Indifferent. Efficient. “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I’m at the Castle on the Dellecher school grounds and we need an ambulance, immediately.”
“What is the nature of your emergency?” She was so cool, so calm. I fought an urge to shout at her, Emergency! Does it mean nothing to you?
“Some kind of drug overdose, I don’t know. Get help here, now.”